Peter Witkowski Biblical Counseling, Discipleship

Mourning and Celebrating: A Biblical Response to Pastoral Sin

Christians typically either grab a magnifying glass or their broom when they discover that their pastor is no longer above reproach. Those in the detective camp pour over the disgraced man’s sermons, his aloof interpersonal skills, and his propensity to arrive five minutes late to everything hoping to create a diagnostic that will save them from future hurt. Those with the brooms take the opposite approach and attempt to sweep away all thoughts of the hurt. They refuse to talk about the sin and work hard to return to normal, excusing, overlooking, and ignoring the scandal. Though common, neither response aligns with scriptural principles. As seen in David’s response to the news of King Saul’s death in 2 Samuel 1:17-27, the appropriate response to the sin of God’s anointed consists of mourning the effects of his sin, hating the cause of his sin, and then celebrating good that God accomplished through this failed leader.

Mourn the Effects of His Sin

Though about to be king himself, David does not begin his lamentation with a leadership autopsy but with mourning. David laments the death of Saul because it obscures the glory of God. According to David, the Philistine women, the most vulnerable of God’s enemies, are gleefully mocking the one true God (2 Sam 1:19-20). They assume that God’s inability to save Saul reveals that God is weak and unable to give his people victory over their enemies. And now the enemies rejoice because they believe that the God of Israel is just another powerless deity crafted by human imagination to suppress and inspire the simple. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob needs no longer be feared or obeyed.

Understanding the confusion caused by Saul’s sin and death, David does not endlessly tweet about event or post YouTube videos discussing how to prevent future failures. He does not invite the world into the problems of God’s people but longs for the event to fade from the public consciousness so that God might once again be worshiped in spirit and in truth. David hates the Saul’s fall from power because it leads the wicked to false conclusions about the God of the universe.  

Instead of pointing to the ineffectiveness of God, the revelation of a pastor’s sin points to the credibility of God’s promises. It serves as a foretaste of God’s coming judgement when “whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops (Lk 12:3).” In other words, the rightful removal of a pastor through church discipline pictures God’s final judgment – that moment when all men and women are judged for their actions. In short, God always gets his man irrespective of his degrees, experience, and ministry footprint. Earthly embarrassment and punishments picture heavenly justice.

But what David understands, the world misses. Thus, David longs for the public discussion around Saul’s death to come to quick and timely end and thereby silence the mockery of the gentiles.

Mourn Causes of His Sin

While David wants the world’s focus on Saul’s death to be short, he does not sweep his own sorrow and hurt under the rug. Feeling the weight of Saul’s sin, David expresses a deep hatred for the events that led to Saul’s death. David goes so far as to pronounce a curse saying, “You mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you nor fields of offerings (2 Sam 1:21)!” In so doing, David does not blame the mountain for Saul’s sins. As noted in 1 Chronicles 10:12, Saul deserved death because he had “broke faith with the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance.” In cursing the mountain, David desires the destruction of every action that led to Saul’s downfall. In the same way, Christians should so hate the sin that led to their pastor’s removal that they curse the innocent laughs that led to an affair, the covetous urge for better vacations that led him to steal, and the lust for power that led him to abuse his staff. They should allow their pastor’s sin to provoke within them a fresh hatred of sin and a fresh commitment to pursue righteousness. Instead of pretending that their pastor’s sin did not profoundly wound them, Christians have the freedom to mourn these scars.

Celebrate the God’s Goodness

But believers should not remain forever in grief. Rather, they should continually move from grief to thanksgiving. In 2 Samuel 1:23-26, David praises the Lord for Saul, noting that Saul fought bravely with Jonathan and brought about an economic boom for God’s people. David encourages the daughters of Israel to, “weep over Saul who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet, who put ornament of gold on your apparel.” In other words, David blesses the Lord for using an evil king to advance the kingdom of Israel.

Similarly, men and women should praise the Lord for using unfaithful men to advance the kingdom of God. Though a pastor disqualifies himself, men and women can still praise the Lord for using that man to bring to them to faith or for using that pastor to restore their marriage. The power of the gospel resides not in a man nor in a particular pastor’s office but in the Lord. And if the Lord uses a deeply fallen man to advance his kingdom and to bring you spiritual good, praise the Lord for his faithfulness. Do not meditate forever on the man’s failure. End your meditations upon the faithfulness God who uses both the wicked and the righteous to advance his kingdom.

Without question, a greater good is accomplished by those who live out the truth that they teach. David rightfully feels a much closer bond to Jonathan. He encouraged David’s faith whereas Saul defied God and attempted to kill David. Still, David ends his lament for both men on the same note.  He praises the Lord for using them to advance his kingdom: “Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely (2 Sam 1:23)!”

A Quick Warning to the Sauls

But in praising the Lord for the good that Saul accomplished, David does not provide justification for sinners and abusers. Rather he entrusts the judgment of the wicked to the Lord who declared in Deuteronomy 32:35 that, “Vengeance is mine.”  No unrepentant pastor, elder, deacon, Sunday school teacher, or a parent will be able to defend their slander, greed, or sexual abuse on judgment day with an appeal to their kids’ success, their church’s growth, or the doubling of their budget. Those outcomes will have no effect upon their eternal destiny. Those who live in their sins will die in their sins. They will know nothing of the blessings that came so near to. Take the words of Matthew 7:21-23 to heart,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”

Though God uses the wicked to advance his kingdom, such usage grants no one access to Jesus’s throne.  To quote the Puritan Joseph Alleine, “You must part with your sins or with your soul; spare but one sin and God will not spare you.”  Pastor do not follow Saul, spare your sins, and die under God’s righteous judgment. 

Final Thoughts

Scholars believe the ancient Israeli army used David’s lament in 2 Samuel 1:17-27 as a marching song. Imagine them chanting the refrains on their PT runs or as they rushed to the front line. The lament’s common usage as well as the New Testament’s drum beat against false teaching reveal that pastors will continue to fall until Christ return. Nothing can immunize us from the possibility of future betrayal and hurt. But even when those dark days come, God will still accomplish his holy will (Rom 8:28). We need not become preoccupied with analyzing pastoral failure. Nor should we not excuse it. Rather following David’s example, we should mourn the effects of his sin, mourn the cause of his sin, and then celebrate God’s faithfulness. In other words, may we forever and always find our hope in God who will never fail us!

Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Memos, Pain & Suffering

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, April Witkowski & the Myth of the Wasted Ministry

To know something of Martyn Lloyd-Jones is to know that the man yearned for revival. In addition to the sermon series which later became the book Revival, Lloyd-Jones devoted countless other sermons, lectures, and letters to the topic of widespread, simultaneous conversion. More than anything else in his life, he longed to see Wales if not the whole evangelical church experience something akin to what had happened during the days of John Wesley or Martin Luther.

Why Revival

The Doctor’s emphasis upon revival in-part grew out of his understanding of spiritual baptism. In addition to the slow, steady growth associated with the normal means of Christian sanctification, the Welsh pastor taught that God would at times fill a local church with a sweet and special awareness of his spirit which would result in the church members’ exponential growth. This moment of growth would then become the foundation needed for another nationwide revival.

Somewhat ironically, I believe Lloyd-Jones helped to split the British Evangelical movement in 1966 because he so longed to lay the groundwork for such a Spiritual baptism that he pressed his Appeal for the formation of a new doctrinally robust association of evangelical churches with an intense zeal that produced more confusion than action. Thus, his very appropriate call to reform the evangelical church around the essential doctrines of the gospel went mostly unheeded. Sensing that no revival was coming in the years that followed 1966, some Lloyd-Jones’s sermons began to take on a slightly negative undertone. Though forever confident in the return of Christ, he no longer spoke of the restoration of the West but more of how all forms of democracy would eventually end in the tyranny of the French revolution. In one sense, I think Lloyd-Jones went to his grave discouraged for God had not seen fit to bring about a revival in his lifetime.

A Testimony of Faithfulness

Though a national revival never came, Lloyd-Jones’s own ministry in London had not proved ineffective. An old family friend of the Doctor told me the other day that he thought one of the greatest tragedies of Lloyd-Jones’s life was that he so longed for national revival that he missed the extraordinary work that God was doing through Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel. With God’s help, the Doctor facilitated thousands of small revivals all throughout England, Wales, and the world. Thousands if not millions of people came to faith either directly through his preaching or indirectly through his writings and through the ministry of the numerous pastors, missionaries, and church members that he had discipled. I write today of Lloyd-Jones because of his very ordinary ministry at Westminster Chapel produced extraordinary fruit. Lloyd-Jones may have lacked a Reformation, but he did not lack a Wittenberg. The fire of revival burned brightly in the pulpit of Westminster Chapel.

Don’t Discount Today

The fact that Lloyd-Jones seemingly missed the glories of the ordinary forest in his unceasing search for that giant, evangelical redwood of revival should serve as a caution to all of us still in ministry – whether that be professionally or otherwise. The temptation to negate or overlook the glories of today because we are so focused on the dreams of what could be tomorrow did not pass with the end of the last century. How many pastors feel discouraged because their church has yet to cross the two-hundred-person threshold? How many singles discount their meaningful ministry to the senior adults in their church and to the young mothers with those crazy two-year-olds because they are still single and are not engaged in the discipling that come with marriage and the arrival of their own children? How many godly men and women with a bent towards missions believe their lives a waste because they spend their day evangelizing their neighbors a couple of doors down instead of reaching people hidden behinds miles of brush in the amazon? How many faithful brothers and sisters in the secular workforce believe their life counts for nothing because they have yet to start their own business or to reach that corner office from which they could make a real difference in the world?

April’s Fear

In truth, my late wife struggled with this temptation. As her life came to a close, she lamented one afternoon how her cancer had kept her from fully engaging in those things that she longed to do with me as we began our ministry at my current church such as: teach Sunday School classes, coordinate VBS programs, attend services, go on home visits, and counsel the hurting. She felt her life incomplete and feared that she had held me back. But as I told her that day as the sun filled the space around her blue rocking chair in our bedroom, she had stewarded her life well. Over the past four plus years, she had served as my greatest counselor and confidant. With her, I processed life and Scripture. Her life showed up not so much in our Sunday school curriculum or in those stick craft projects that make kids’ ministry so fun but in the subliminal content of my sermons, in the essence of my counseling, and in my visions for the future. Indeed, when she died one of the places, I grieved her loss the most was my office. Though she only set in those black chairs across from my desk sporadically during the last few years of her life, she still shaped all that happened behind that heavy white door the separates me from the back entryway. Ordinary, faithful ministry has an extraordinary influence.

The Power of the Ordinary

But what was true of my dear bride and Lloyd-Jones proves true of all of us. Our lives today will not be defined by our dreams, hopes, or expectations of what is to come (of what may never come) but will be defined by our faithful execution of the life and ministry God has given us in this moment. If we are faithfully serving God today in accordance with his Word and our calling and gifting, our lives are not a waste but rather the very definition of success. In other words, we should not discount the ordinary means of grace at work now, believing that all is a waste until the arrival of the extraordinary. In this respect, I believe the Lloyd-Jones’s insistence upon spiritual baptism proved unhelpful. The normative experience of the early church was not Pentecost but rather the faithful plodding associated with Paul’s missionary journeys.  Indeed, the most extraordinary thing about most of us is our ordinary faithfulness.

If that revival never occurs, or if that spouse never comes, or if the ticket to oversees ministry never arrives, and if we stay at our jobs for another 20 years, our lives still possess profound value in the Lord’s economy. If we are faithful today, we will in time bear extraordinary fruit. Take heart, friends. Don’t grow weary of today.

Don’t miss the forest in pursuit of your giant red wood.  

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Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Eli’s Sin Will Be The Death of Your Church

preistGod despises bad pastors.

In the book of 1 Samuel, three corrupt priests receive a large amount of screen time. Eli and his worthless sons are condemned in 1 Samuel 2:12-16, and again in 1 Samuel 2:17-36, and again in 1 Samuel 3:11-24. And all of 1 Samuel 4 is dedicated to their destruction. They are mentioned more than Hannah, Jesse, and many other names that we are familiar with. Yet, we talk about them very little. I too was unaware of how much screen time they received until I started preaching though 1 Samuel.

Let’s talk about them.

What is their great sin? Eli’s sons stole God’s sacrifices. They picked the choicest meats. When God fearing people refused to defer to the priest, Eli’s sons threatened their church members with physical violence. They would say, “No you must give it to me now, and it not, I will take it by force (1 Sam. 2:16).” Taking note of their abuses, God declared that the “sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt (1 Sam. 2:17).” And God deems these men beyond hope and kills them (1 Sam. 3:14; 4:11).

And though Eli’s sons experience the wrath of God, Eli received the majority of the blame. The prophet in 1 Samuel 2 was sent to Eli and asked Eli bluntly, “Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I command for my dwelling, and honor your sons above my by fatting yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel (1 Sam. 2:29)?”  God kills Eli, wipes out his family, and takes the Ark of God away from the tabernacle because Eli loves his sons more than God.

However, we should not write off Eli has some super-villain who always had it out for righteousness, love, and mercy. He was not going around pouring pepper in people’s coffee, slapping babies, and getting drunk every night. He blessed Hannah (1 Sam 1:17). He trained Samuel. He was not all bad. But when pushed came to shove, he chose to honor his sons instead of God. Instead of condemning his sons and overseeing their execution, Eli joined them. Consequently, he doomed himself, his family, and his ministry to destruction.

The Scottish theolog Alexander Maclaren noted:

But all was marred by a fatal lack of strong, stern resolve to tolerate no evil which he ought to suppress. Good, weak men, especially when they let foolish tenderness hinder righteous severity, bring terrible evils on themselves, their families, and their nation.

I fear many of our churches are dying for just this reason. These men are not all bad. These pastors preach some decent sermons. They show up at the hospital from time to time. But when sin arises in their midst, they look the other way. They lack the resolve to meaningfully apply what they preach.

Sure, they may encourage people to try to fix their marriage instead of divorcing; they may encourage the drunk to stop drinking; and, they may encourage the abuser to stop being angry. But if their light advise is rejected by the congregant, they back off like Eli did (1 Sam. 2:22-25). They refuse to discipline the man who is leaving his wife to pursue the sexier more understanding girl down the street. They refuse to bring a second witness to the drunk’s house to call him to change. They refuse to put out the sexual immoral, the covetous, the angry, the thieving ,the arrogant, and the prideful.

After all, won’t people talk? Won’t people get angry and leave? Won’t people in the community think our church is harsh, unkind, and unloving? Won’t people stop attending and stop giving? If we value the worship and holiness of God more than the feelings of men and women, we will lose the buts in our seats and dollar in our bank account. We can’t risk offending their people.

Thinking the above, many pastors refuse to address the unchecked sin in their congregation. They refuse to talk about sin outside of Sunday morning. They refuse to meaningfully counsel with those overcome with sin. They refuse to bring unrepentant sinners before the church, acting as if Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 7 did not exist. They refuse to honor God in heaven more than the people in their pews. And though God is gracious, he will eventually crush those who lead his church to make much of the emotions of men and women. God will not let Christian leaders mock his name forever. God will act; he will depose pastors and remove churches.

Brothers and sisters, I believe most of our SBC churches are in decline for this very reason. Many of the pastors in our convention are more concerned about not offending Susie, Sally, and Jim Bob than they are about worshiping God. And sadly, most of these pastors and their hand-selected leaders have no plans to change course. After all, they deem their failure to address sin to be mark of spiritual maturity. Ah how peaceful their dead churches seem to be.

“Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump (1 Cor. 5:6)?”

Because these pastors do not address sin, their congregations become more and more sinful. People like Eli’s son begin to dominate business meetings, Sunday school classes, and benevolence ministries. Soon, the whole church is driven by man-centered goals and the gospel fades into the background. Those who love Jesus are shown the door.

Admittedly, most pastors will not stand idly-bye as their churches slide into decline. They will launch a new small group ministry. They will rebrand an existing program. And, they will seek to update the music ministry, calling the choir director their “Creativity Team Leader.” (Goosebumps anyone?)

But will these pastors make the glory of God the primary thing? Will they recover their first love? Will they risk all to obey and honor God? Sadly, the answer is no. As a result of their leadership, their church will be obliterated. God does not honor those who mock his word.

Brothers and sisters until we care about the glory of God, we have no reason to hope for change. We have no reason to expect our dying churches will once again breathe the life of the gospel. Evangelism programs won’t save us. As James MacDonaled noted,

Placing evangelistic ministries above the mission of the God’s glory is the single most destructive error in the church today.”

Cooperation with other SBC entities at the state and national level won’t save us. And updated contextualization strategies won’t save us. Repentance will save us. Once again honoring God above all else will save us!

God spent a lot of time discussing Eli and his sons, because he is deeply concerned about his glory and hates those who love people more than God. Are you willing to make the glory of God your main concern? Are you wiling to call you pastor or pastors to do that? Or are you content to wait for the coming judgment? God despises bad pastors.  Do you? Their churches will die. Will yours?